Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Balance
The second you tell yourself you’re not allowed something your body instantly craves it, although this rule never seems to work with vegetables. If there’s something you love you don’t need to cut it out your diet completely to have a healthy life. You can have a huge lunch full of starch and carbohydrates but for dinner you need something a little lighter like a salad, you can even have a donut or a slice of chocolate cake so long as you balance it out with something like an apple for desert after the next meal. Don’t look at your diet like a restrictive lifestyle choice, it’s simply about give and take, a little compromise and balance.
Save and Share
From childhood we were always taught to clear our plates but this isn’t always the best attitude. We’re not children anymore and most of us don’t spent all day chasing our friends round a play ground, riding our bikes for fun and growing. Of course you don’t want to waste food but this mentality of not wasting food comes from our grandparents and their grandparents, when there was rationing and fridge freezers and microwaves were not so common place. Just because it’s sat on your plate you don’t have to eat it there and then, when you go to a restaurant always leave a third and ask for a doggy bag, when you’re cooking put a third straight into a container for the fridge. This way you’re not forcing food down your throat that you’re not going to truly enjoy and you’ve got lunch for tomorrow.
Natural
Our modern lifestyles might make some things more convenient, things like microwaves and freezers are great but we can get a bit too lazy sometimes. Make your diet as natural as possible by making your dinner from scratch. This doesn’t mean you can’t eat your favourite foods; just learn how to make them yourself. This can be time consuming so try and set some time aside when you know you can spend a few hours in the kitchen, look through recipes before hand and make sure you’ve got everything you’re going to need. Make enough for a few meals and freeze a few containers so you’ve got lunch for a few days. Once you’ve invested in all the ingredients and herbs and spices you’ll find this will also be a lot cheaper in the long run.
Concentrate
Make sure you’re enjoying your food, if you’re enjoying what you’re eating you want to give it your full attention, don’t sit there with your tea on your lap as you watch television and don’t stand in the kitchen snacking. Take your food, sit down and look at what you’re eating, this way you’re going to notice when you’re getting full up too so you can stop eating before you start to feel uncomfortable. If you have a family dinner or you tend to talk when you’re eating remember to slow down otherwise you’re not going to notice how much you’re eating.
Size
It can look hard to cut back on portion sizes, after all no one wants to be presented with a dinner plate only half full of food. Serve your dinner on smaller plates like salad plates so your brain doesn’t notice you’re eating less. If you want to tuck into some ice cream in the evening, don’t have the whole tub and sit in front of the TV, serve a portion in a small bowl and make do with it, the same goes for crisps and chips.